


Without Feathers

by twistedchick



Series: Identity [7]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:21:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon considers his two favorite detectives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without Feathers

Appearances are deceiving. There's no doubt about it.

Especially when it comes to anything dealing with Sandburg and Ellison.

It had been a rough week, what with the three homicides (all unrelated, all family crimes fairly easily solved but every one of them messy) and the long, wearing stakeout down on the docks to pull in the smugglers who wanted to use Cascade as a test market for their latest drugs. It didn't help that the FBI swooped in and grabbed our arrestees just after we'd nabbed them, and swept them off to some other location, so that none of my men got the credit. And the Fibbies wonder why we don't look pleased when they show up.

Men and woman. I've got to quit talking like that or Connor is going to be unbearable to deal with. Maybe I should persuade Rhonda to go to the Academy; that would give me more than one female detective, though it would lose me the best administrative assistant in the entire city government. But it would be easier to talk about the men and women of Major Crime than the men and woman, or the detectives and the inspector -- which makes Conner sound like the last person on the assembly line in some clothing factory. Oh, Lord, she'd hate that.

I'd better not let that thought out of my mind, at least not when I'm sparring with her in the department gym. Whatever kangaroo taught her to kick box made her too damn good at it for my comfort, especially when she's annoyed. It's a good thing she's always respectful to authority, whether she's actually listening to what I say or not, but I don't think I can bank on her not listening if I say something I don't want her to hear.

Listen to me ramble; I'm starting to sound like Sandburg. It's really been a long week.

Anyway, Sandburg dragged Jim and me to see this new movie, 'Dogma,' that he said was going to be so funny. Well. I knew he had a warped sense of humor before, but now I'm certain of it. I grew up Baptist, so a lot of this theology stuff goes straight over my head like the Concorde. I just thought the movie needed a bit of help -- including a new script, and at least one new actor (the one played by the author.)

Jim grew up Catholic; I could see him wincing at some of it and hear him laughing outright at other parts. Sandburg, of course, with his multi-cultural, multi-religious background, just ate it up like candy. I could almost see him storing up the skewered ideas and weird arguments for use in another of his papers. (Damned if I know how he gets all these things published, but he does; I've got a small pile of journals featuring Dr. Blair Sandburg's writings on my bookshelf. I don't expect all the articles to make sense to me, but some are unexpectedly funny, not that I'm going to tell him that. I snickered all afternoon over the one that compared the social hierarchy of police organizations to various animal cultural group studies. I've always known I run a zoo here, but was it supposed to be that obvious?)

The one thing that made sense to me in that movie was the fallen angels. They were tall, young guys with serious attitudes, and sweet harps and haloes weren't on their agenda. They weren't that kind of angels. Wings or not, they were more interested in kicking ass than in floating around on clouds, and they were damned effective at it, too. I found myself fantasizing that I could convert them to controlling chaos instead of instigating it and recruit them into the department, and the effect that might have on the local crime rate, until I remembered who I was sitting next to.

Jim's been amazingly relaxed lately, considering the amount of change he's gone through in the last year or so, especially in the months since Blair joined the force. He's still all business at work, still out there putting in long hours and the good hard work and closing cases with thorough attention to the kind of detail that gets convictions, and his partner's right there next to him doing the same thing. Having Sandburg as a detective instead of an observer has squared the team's abilities, or perhaps raised them to some kind of exponential power. (I never was that good at higher math. Maybe I should ask Darryl when he gets home from college next vacation, after he finishes that course in calculus.)

I'd never realized how much energy Jim was putting into keeping Blair safe until he didn't have to do it any more and could pour that much more attention into his work. Lately, he's been fine-tuning what he can see and smell and touch, to an amazing degree; he can read a signature three pages down on a notepad with his eyes or fingertips, or smell the aftershave left on a chair by a man's coat after the man has been gone an hour. Then he and Sandburg work twice as hard trying to find something less esoteric for evidence to back up the things a judge and jury would never listen to, and nine times out of ten they find it.

I admit I'm curious about how he does these things. I'm supposed to be curious; it's in the job description for a captain of detectives, right after keeping track of my men. (And woman.) But I don't 'officially' want to know more than I have to. What I don't know, I won't have to explain to anyone else, especially the people on that long list that starts with Chief Warren and the mayor and continues through the entire roster of national defense agencies in all their manifestations. And what I don't know, I won't have to tuck into that long list of lies and hidden compartments in my mind that gets more packed by the day, especially with those two around. As long as they bring me results, I can defend my men and look authoritative and forbidding without needing to know how they get them.

But -- those two and angels ...

That wasn't an idea I wanted to have in my mind to start with, but once it was there I couldn't get rid of it. Thank God it wasn't a movie about anything resembling Sentinels. One in Cascade is all I can deal with, thank you very much. But one Sentinel and Guide combo and a pair of kick-ass angels under my command would be a temptation I'd be hard-pressed to turn down.

***

It's probably not a surprise that Jim Ellison started out as one of the toughest challenges I've ever faced as a supervisor, let along as a superior officer. When I'd heard the hero Ranger was joining Cascade P.D., I figured we'd get a spit-and-polish best-of-the-best soldier with the kind of special training you can't buy. It wasn't that easy. By the time he'd gone through a few months with Narcotics and several years with Vice it looked like he wasn't such a bargain any more. He couldn't have had that insolence in his manner when he was in the Army, and it made him almost impossible to supervise.

Partnering him with Jack Pendergrass was the best move I could have made. Jack had been a cop so long that he hadn't just seen it all, he'd done it all and with more style than anyone else; he was years beyond shock or surprise, and he genuinely liked Ellison from the first. I don't think being liked was a response 'Slick' Ellison had gotten for a while. He was tolerated in Vice because of his success at going underground and closing the worst cases on the roster, but he'd been put on suspension more than once for roughing up his collars before they were booked, and the list of altercations with fellow Vice cops was almost as long. Most cops learn by experience and observation how to walk the narrow line between following regulations and doing what needs to be done; he came in here knowing it all, from his Army years, and it didn't help that he'd been a captain in the Rangers. He didn't like learning that police 'officer' can cover the equivalent of a buck private as well as higher ranks. When he didn't like the way something was going, he made his views known; once he was in Vice, where more was (unfortunately) tolerated, he was willing to use muscle to back up his attitude if he thought it appropriate. It seldom was.

And then he closed the Red Knight case singlehandedly, after Narcotics and Vice together had given it up as one of those hopeless situations that you slog along at but never finish. Red Knight wasn't a man, it was the name of a strip club where deals were made with the biggest underground players in the Northwest -- deals involving drugs, murders, prostitution and smuggling, coordinated among all the criminal gangs on the coast.

To do this he went under cover for months, mostly working alone, often without any backup for weeks at a time, turning himself into the slimiest of the slimes in order to clean out the pit. He started as hired muscle, working his way toward the heart of the organization until he could get it into his grip and rip it apart.

(Do angels ever work undercover like that? Are there angels with sooty gray wings, sitting in the shadowy byways on some special ethereal plane, taking names and numbers, acting as decoys for the darker forces and keeping the worst that can happen to humans from occurring? Listen to me, I'm really starting to sound like Sandburg on one of his speculative kicks.)

Ellison never talked about what happened on that case except during his testimony before the grand jury. The arrests almost overflowed the lockup downstairs; the bodies of the ones he'd taken out before and during the police raid filled the morgue. He had gathered enough hard evidence -- ledgers, letters, computer files, phone tapes -- that the suspects rolled over on their bosses, and on their bosses' bosses and associates, and a full rack of guilty pleas was filed. IA cleared him on all the shootings, and the deaths where he wasn't using a firearm were ruled justifiable, self-defense. Outside the hearing he kept silence, but it was in his eyes when he transferred to my department and came upstairs, and I didn't ask. It was enough that he was on our side of the dark alley.

At first it was almost more than enough. Slick Ellison hadn't been expecting me; he'd been expecting to work for Captain Bruce Bellosch, an old-line former military man who'd gained his experience in the trenches in the early days of Vietnam. He would have had a whole lot more in common with Bellosch than with me; my Army duty was spent as a M.P. in the Philippines, Germany and Spain, not at the front. I'd had the training every Army recruit receives, but I'd only had to use it to stop bar fights and roust drunks, not to keep me alive in the jungle.

But Bellosch had a heart attack just after Jim put in for the transfer, and the paperwork was delayed by the then-captain of Vice, who didn't want his case closure rate to drop, and by the time it was sorted out I'd moved up here from a detective lieutenant's position in Narcotics, and we were stuck with each other.

I can't say I liked what I saw across the desk from me; I don't think he was too pleased, either. But he took orders, however unwillingly, cleaned up his act just enough to get by, and started to buckle down and learn from Jack, and we got along.

The one remnant of his days in Vice that never left, though, was his behavior in an interrogation.

When Darryl's home, he likes to watch those martial-arts fantasy shows, the ones filmed in Australia or New Zealand or somewhere down there where it rains as much as in Cascade. I've sat down and watched them with him a time or two, and the first time I saw the character of Ares, the god of war, I knew something about him looked too familiar. It wasn't the actor; it was the behavior. Everything Ares did, in every scene, was a kind of seduction, the lure of strength and power and danger offering something that could be found only in dreams -- or nightmares. You could tell, watching, that he'd never follow through with any of it, he just got his kicks on the seduction, watching his targets squirm.

That's what I saw from behind the glass panel in the observation room, every time Jim was in the box, a seduction. He was an actor using every charm, every skill in his repertoire to pull a confession out of the suspect sitting at the table: the looks, the walk, the soft voice that could go rock hard and back to velvet in an instant. It didn't matter if it was a man or a woman, old or young; every last one of them would be so convinced of the illusion of what he offered that they would tell him things they'd have done anything to conceal, often without realizing it until the words were said. And then the curl of his lips looked just like the sneer of Ares. He had little or no respect for anyone stupid enough to succumb to his wiles.

I can't say I'm guiltless in this; I used him whenever I had someone who hadn't cracked for anyone else. I can't say I didn't see the toll it was taking on him, but I justified it for too long. Then Jack died, and I saw what was happening, and I couldn't justify it any more. I only sent him into the box when the collar was his, and I kept a close eye on what happened. He never went beyond what was legal while I was watching, though he skirted the edges closer than anyone else, but he'd gone numb inside by then, stone over scar tissue. I tried to partner him with other detectives, but it was like trying to partner the Titanic and the iceberg. Eventually, I gave in and let him work alone, with the solemn and spoken understanding that he would call for backup as soon as it appeared necessary by the book, not just when he felt like it, and he accepted that.

Where was Carolyn Plummer during all this? Doing her job, in Forensics, as she'd done for years, but not involved with my detective unless they ran into each other in the elevator. They'd married soon after he graduated from the Academy, while he and I were in Narcotics; both were from old Cascade families and had probably gone through high school together. I never knew and I never asked. By the time he'd started to make that fierce reputation in Vice, the marriage was already on the rocks, and the papers had been served months before he appeared upstairs in his ball cap, his torn-sleeved muscle shirt and his earring, wearing a smirk that said he knew exactly what reputation had gone before him and that he expected to live up to it.

He was granite then, all hard surface with no hint of anything different underneath. Nothing made him crumble, or falter emotionally. Oh, the emotions might have still been there behind his eyes, but the no-man's-land hiding them was even more obvious.

Then he ran across something he couldn't ignore or push away -- those damned overactive senses -- and I'd never seen anyone so terrified in my life.

***

"So, Chief, you going to get another journal article out of that stupid movie?"

"C'mon, Jim. I know it's not your kind of thing, but I heard you laughing."

Jim's hands went up. "All right, all right. It had its funny spots. The question stands."

Sandburg shrugged, a little grin on his lips. "Maybe. I can think of a few things I could do with it, but not yet. What did you think, Simon?"

I looked at him over my glasses. "I liked the angels."

"The angels? You've got to be kidding."

"No joke, Sandburg. I liked the angels. So did you, Jim. I heard a few snickers coming from your seat."

"Guilty as charged, Simon." His eyebrow rose and I waited. "You thinking of recruiting a couple of spare angels for Major Crime?"

"It couldn't hurt," I said blandly, finally able to light a cigar since we were outside the theatre and walking down the street. "There's certainly no angels there now. The change could only improve the place."

"Now, Simon, are you sure about that?" Jim tilted his head toward his partner and pointed at him with his chin. "I seem to recall a certain long-haired observer who could manage to get away with almost anything with our secretarial staff, not to mention certain forensics staff, just by looking innocent."

"Give me a break, Jim." The former observer punched him in the arm. "I knew better than to act innocent around Sam; the woman has no respect for innocence."

I stared over his head. "It's a good thing Captain Banks isn't around here to hear you talk about fraternization."

"Yes it is, Simon," Sandburg said. Without the long hair he looks a decade older, but no less charming than before. He strolled along, hands in his pockets, and gave me a glance full of mischief. "But that's a bit of historical information, with absolutely no relevance in today's world. Besides, the statute of limitations on that particular crime ran out a long time ago."

"Which crime is that, Chief?" Jim paused in front of a coffee shop, eyeing the pastries.

I decided to let that one go. "Coffee, anyone? It's on me, since Sandburg so graciously paid for the movie."

"Well, I wouldn't have gone to that one on my own money," Jim murmured, eyeing a mocha brownie as if it were about to escape from custody.

"I know," Sandburg said calmly. "That's why I got free passes from Brianna."

"Free passes?" Jim turned toward his partner. "What did you have to do for them, Chief?"

"Reprogram her computer after it crashed with bad software. I did it last Sunday morning when you were sleeping late." He pushed the door open. "C'mon, we getting coffee or not?"

I rubbed out the cigar carefully, and put it back into its case for later. The doctor told me to cut back on smoking, I'd been limiting myself to one a day if that, and I wasn't about to waste my allotment by making the rest of it unfit for later.

The two of them bantered about the computer-ticket swap while we ordered and found a table in the back. This place was a little higher-class than the usual; you ordered at the counter and found a seat and someone would bring your drinks and food. It took only a couple of minutes for the tray to arrive, by which time the conversation had moved back to the movie. I wasn't paying much attention; just the smell of the coffee was making me feel good. I noticed Jim sniffing the air subtly -- he tilted his head, like my uncle's hunting dog catching bird scent -- and wondered how strong something like this got for him. Could he zone out on coffee? He never did on the stuff from the break room, but he would get this look on his face while drinking the coffee I brewed in my office that made me think he's close to it at times. Then again, Brown got that same look when he was having my coffee, and he'd drink almost anything with caffeine in it.

Sandburg was going on about the fallen angels' plan to get back into heaven, and how the other characters had thwarted it. "I can't believe you really liked them, Simon. I've never seen you like the villains in a movie before, unless it's Arnold."

"Arnold is never a villain, Sandburg; he's a misplaced hero."

"Right. Sure." Sandburg took a sip of his double-chocolate latte, followed it with a bite of a raspberry tart and sighed happily. "I suppose 'Terminator' was a misplaced-hero movie?"

"Weren't you saying something last week about alternate histories?" I shrugged, deep in enjoyment of my own triple-shot cappucino, decaf only so I could get some sleep later on. "The sequel just fixed the situation, made him the legitimate hero."

"Works for me," Jim said. I noticed he was having the shop's coffee of the day, though a larger than usual cup, and was keeping firm custody of that mocha brownie.

"I thought you were going to try the flavored stuff this time," Sandburg said, noticing Jim's drink as well.

"Not this time. I can taste the flavoring in the air; that's about all I want to deal with," Jim said.

It made sense.

"So, you think there should be another movie that 'fixes' the angels from this one?" Sandburg pursued.

"Yeah. Might be interesting to get someone like them to work for me in Major Crime," I mused, sipping my drink. "Of course, they'd have to be a whole lot closer to the straight and narrow, like the rest of the squad."

I'd never considered the effect of coffee coming out someone's nose before. It's not a pretty sight. Fortunately, Jim managed to contain his snort with a napkin so he didn't soak the table, without help from Sandburg, who seemed to be having a severe coughing attack. I had to thump him on the back before he waved a hand at me and started to breathe more or less normally again.

"Did I say something?" I asked.

The two of them exchanged a look.

"I'm assuming you meant 'narrow' in a metaphorical way, Simon? I mean, Henri and Joel aren't exactly thin," Sandburg said, so offhand that it could have come from the other side of the room. "And they're both valued members of Major Crime."

"He'd have to, Chief. Although, you know, I don't think we can rate Major Crime detectives on size alone. Not in terms of effectiveness. Connor's not that large -- she's more on the narrow side -- but her kung fu kicks make her extremely effective in subduing unruly suspects." Jim looked sober as a judge (or sober as a judge should be) as he sat back in his chair. He took another bite of brownie and tried to look innocent.

You know, Jim Ellison has never been able to put that 'innocent' act over on me, but I decided to play along this time and see how far he'd spin it out, and what his compadre there would do to keep it going.

"Mm-hm," I said. "Now, Rafe's appearance must be intimidating enough that he doesn't need the additional size to make his arrests. He just has to show up in those suits, and the suspects feel shamed by their unfashionable appearance." I let a smile start to show. "Must be nice to have that kind of power. You'll never do that, Sandburg."

"Hey, I protest! I can dress as elegantly as anyone in the department."

"You do clean up well, Chief." Jim admitted, "Especially when you're in a tux for one of the Mayor's shindigs."

"You don't look so bad in a tux yourself on occasion, big guy."

"Big guy? Hunh," I said. "What does that make me, bigger guy? I'm not sure I like that."

"No, Simon, you're boss guy."

"Right." I saw another glance work its way between them. "You know, we have a nondiscrimination policy in Cascade city government; doesn't matter on race, creed, color, sexual preference, national origin, the whole thing. It's not the captain's business what the detectives do on their own time. Though, I have to say," I rested an approving eye on Sandburg, "I'm grateful that you've stopped working your way through the women of the department. It's so much more peaceful now."

Sandburg hunched forward a little and muttered, "Hey, I value my life. Some of those women are harder to deal with than you are, on a bad day. No offence, Simon."

"None taken." This was getting interesting. I didn't check my curiosity at the door of my office when I moved from detective to administrator. "So, how are the men turning out?"

Sandburg choked again; this time Jim thumped him on the back.

"Pretty well."

"Good, good. I want my detectives to lead well-rounded lives, you know."

Jim blinked at this. "Well-rounded lives, Simon? What is this, a size fetish? How do you expect us to be narrow and well-rounded at the same time?"

I shook my head. "And you call yourself a detective."

"No, you call him a detective. He calls himself Jim." Sandburg was catching on, his eyes bright, though the tips of his ears were turning red. He was a lot easier to read now that his hair was shorter, though he hadn't been that hard before most of the time. Baffling, upsetting and confusing, but not hard.

I put up a hand. "Hey, you think I didn't earn this rank? I was a detective when you were still wet behind the ears."

"This morning?" Jim made a show of dabbing behind his partner's nearer ear with a napkin. "That's what happens when you use all the hot water, junior."

"Now Jim, here," I waved the hand toward him, "I've known about Jim ever since he came into my department. It's just taken me a little longer to figure you out, Sandburg."

"Oh?" Sandburg batted the hand away. "So tell me, what was The Great Jim Ellison like back in the Jurassic era?"

"Pretty much a T-Rex." I smiled, remembering. "In a muscle shirt and an earring." Jim flushed. "You think I didn't hear what Jack said in the hall that day, after I'd hauled your ass in my office for insubordination? He was only confirming what I'd heard coming up the line."

"Which was?" He was giving me the Ellison face, not the Jim one, and it wasn't clear if it was a joke or not.

"Let me guess," Sandburg chimed in. "Something like 'damn good cop, impressive record, don't mess with him or you'll regret it.' Right? Or am I missing something?"

"How many sides of the street I played on?" Jim said softly, the Ellison face gone as he watched his partner.

"Yeah. All of them, as I remember."

"You've got a good memory, Simon. Too good."

"Should I ask how many you're playing on now?"

"Only one, Simon, only one." Jim's hand came down on the back of the booth next to Sandburg's shoulder.

"How about you? Not that it's any of my business, of course, but anything that keeps the Captain from sticking his foot in his mouth during office hours is appreciated." I didn't really need the verbal confirmation, not when I saw Sandburg leaning back into that arm.

Sandburg's eyes lit up with the same kind of unholy laughter as the angels in the movie. "Let's just say I've scouted out my territory and it's only on one side of the street right now."

"Right now?" Jim cuffed the back of his head gently.

"Hey, give me a break. Okay, okay, it's at only one address. You satisfied?"

"Oh, yeah." This time the look in Jim's eyes would have ignited concrete.

"Should I ask how long this has been going on, or should I just mind my own business?" I started thinking back over the past year -- and realized I'd seen those same glances for months, maybe longer. "On second thought, that's more than I need to know."

***

I shouldn't have said Sandburg was easy to read. It's true, but it's not.

He's easy to read wherever Ellison is concerned. He's just difficult to read anywhere else.

Oh, he's still the liberal in a department of mostly conservatives, so far out on the left wing sometimes in his views that it's as if he's trying to balance the views of the entire government single-handedly. He's still the first to try to talk a situation down and the last to pull his weapon and aim it at anyone.

But since that debacle with his first dissertation, he's closed in on himself. He's toughened up a bit as a detective; he's had to look at things he could avoid as an observer, and it's changed him as it changed all of us. You don't stare at too many bloody naked dead bodies and walk away as if nothing's happened inside you, especially if you need every detail on each of those bodies and its surroundings to figure out who put it there and how to catch the murderer.

But, as I think of it, the change goes deeper than that.

Sandburg has always been a bit like one of those research computers down at the public library that Darryl used when he was writing term papers: ask a question on anything at all, any subject, and you'll get answers that will be useful now and some that might be useful later, and a few more things that might not be useful ever but could be interesting nonetheless. Sandburg's more focused now; we get the useful answers, fewer of the maybes and interestings. He's still creative, good at solving problems, very good with people. He might be the best we've got at dealing with victims of some kinds of crime, the ones where the hurt is more on the inside than the outside.

Maybe it's that he's no longer the perpetual student, the way he was when he started. He's got the degree -- I still don't know how that happened, nobody talked about it, but I would've paid money to see it -- and he gives a seminar at the university, but he's not doing that extensive research he used to do for the classes he taught, where he always had to find out everything about some odd topic because it would be in his next lecture. His scope has narrowed, to Cascade and work in Major Crime and to Jim Ellison, and he's not spending as much time going crazy with delight over some new discovery concerning some group nobody outside National Geographic has ever heard of.

Then again, he's as unpredictable as Ellison. That just might be why that improbable partnership has continued for so long, when I, personally, never expected it to last more than a couple of weeks at the most.

***

You don't get to be a police captain without becoming a pretty good judge of human nature. Face it, most of the time cops are dealing with people who have one reason or another to lie to them. You get used to telling who's lying and who's just stretching the truth a little, and who's giving you the real deal.

Most days it's a mixed bag, some of each. The next week, it was all of the first one, and no fun whatsoever.

It started on Monday, with a call from an informer that something big was going down on Quincy Street by the docks. Two squad cars of uniforms later, I got the call from the Commissioner that Ignatius Ashford had been found down there, underneath the far end of the Quincy Street pier, way out in the river. Or, rather, what was left of him. He'd been there a week, at least, and the crabs and fish had been hungry.

Ashford himself hadn't been a big fish in the waters of Cascade crime, but he hadn't been a minnow either. He had swum about half way up the food chain and made a place for himself in any number of shady deals while maintaining a Teflon surface that kept any charges from sticking to him at all. For years, we hadn't been able to get him on running a stop sign, let along on the heavier stuff he'd been involved in.

I felt half inclined to want to thank whoever had dealt with him, but the other half felt really annoyed at the amount of work we'd have to do to clean up the situation.

If he'd been at the top of the chain, we'd have known to expect mob warfare of one kind or another. At the bottom, he'd have been just another little fish eaten by sharks. But in the middle, his death could mean any number of things. Was this a power struggle among the local wiseguys and hotshots, or was someone new trying to muscle in and make his way? Was it a takeover by Ashford's own people, or outsiders?

The body had been in the water so long that even Ellison couldn't pick up anything more than the regular forensics examination. There weren't any clues on the clothing, nothing in the pockets other than Ashford's wallet containing identification but no money. The M.O. wasn't familiar from previous gang or mob killings; he'd drowned, in river water, and had been strung up under the pier in the same river. It was a sure thing the body had been moved, as that wasn't a convenient place to drown someone without a lot of help, but there wasn't any evidence to show that other than the forensic knowledge of just how difficult it can be to drown an unwilling victim -- and Ashford hadn't been drugged beforehand. The medical examiner estimated he'd been there two to three weeks; there was so little flesh left on some of the exposed bones, especially around the face, that he was unable to determine the extent of bruises.

It didn't help that he was the third cousin to the Commissioner's ex-wife's brother or something like that. I hate it when the 'who' in a crime becomes more important than it has to. We give our best attention to every case that comes over my desk; I make sure of it. I hate the implication that we're supposed to do more on some cases because it involves relatives of someone important.

Whatever. Since it was a case dealing with a relative of a relative of a VIP, it had to be watertight. No pun intended at all.

Banks' first rule of administration: make paperwork your friend. Or else.

I set Connor on checking out the small fry, Rafe on looking into the behavior of the other fish on Ashford's level, and Brown on a fast review of the hard hitters in the game. And then I called in Sandburg and Ellison and gave them what I'm sure they considered the worst job of all, the paper chase through the files, clippings and reports, tracing Ashford's steps through his multilevel deals. Ellison hates paperwork, but he's got the mind for connecting the dots; Sandburg can summarize, evaluate and make recommendations faster than anyone else, while coming up with more to go on. For the time being, Joel and the uniforms attached to Major Crime would have to deal with whatever else came up, until this was closed.

None of it worked.

So much for Monday and Tuesday.

Connor, Rafe and Brown came up dry. Nobody knew anything. Even the usual snitches were missing the clue bus. On Wednesday, I asked them to pitch in on the paper chase, and had Sandburg fill them in on what they'd learned so far, and they headed down the hall toward the conference room.

I didn't like the way this case was refusing to shape up and get solved. The last thing we needed in Cascade was a bunch of antsy mobsters willing to pick one another other off. That kind of thing got messy fast. I really didn't care if they took each other out, one by one, and saved the taxpayers' money, but innocent people would get hurt. That would cause more trouble than I wanted to think about if the whole situation wasn't stopped, and stopped now.

Ellison stayed behind, with that uncertain expression on his face that means he wants to talk to me but isn't sure how I'll take what he's about to say. That expression has gotten way too familiar the past few years for my comfort level.

But who said this job was about my comfort level?

"Jim. Shut the door." The door shut. "What's on your mind?"

I watched as my best trained, most experienced detective stared out the window for a moment, and pretended I had the patience to wait until he'd break down and say whatever he was going to say. After a moment or two, I got tired of waiting.

"Was there something specific you wanted to say, or were you planning to give me the weather report for the Northwest region?" I inquired, with only a little sarcasm.

His eyes flicked back to me, light gray. Ellison's eyes get lighter and brighter when he feels strongly about what he's about to say. This time they were almost silver, with a bluish overtone like pale steel.

"We, that is, Sandburg and I, have been doing some experiments with the Sentinel senses, and there might be a way for us to use them to break this case."

I know when someone's lying to me. He was absolutely certain he was telling the truth. This worried me. Jim has been around almost as long as I have, if in different places. He knows that you only tell the person in command as much as that person needs to know.

"I'm listening." I prompted, not sure I wanted to hear the rest but certain that I probably should.

"We might be able to find the killer within, say, an hour or so."

"That's great!" I couldn't help leaning forward or feeling excited about this, but I saw his eyes change color, deepen, and knew there had to be more to it than that. "What do you have to do, one of Sandburg's weird shamanic rituals?"

His eyes were bluer, still pale, the color of a northern horizon. "It's a little more complicated than that, actually. I'm not sure you want to know the details."

"I'm sure I don't." I came around the desk and stood in front of him, wondering just what would be involved and whether it would land us on the cover of the Los Angeles Times or the Weekly World News. "This doesn't involve sacrificing chickens or anything, does it?" We'd had to send out uniforms to clean up far too many dead chicken sacrifices since the last Santeria case, and I didn't want to have to deal with the complaints about that again.

"No chickens, sir." He smiled briefly, and I realized that he might have made sure his partner would be the one to talk with the other detectives for a reason. This might not be something Sandburg felt comfortable with.

Sandburg's got a comfort zone about the size of Seattle, most days. What would make him that uncomfortable? Or was it just that Jim was uncomfortable and, because it involved his partner, he didn't want the kid to interfere?

He's not a kid. I know. He's a detective, and a damn good one.

Or was it that Jim felt it was something I'd feel uncomfortable with? Lord knows, most of that shamanic stuff goes right over my head, and the mystical business makes me itch. It's not something I can pin down or measure, or explain easily to the Commissioner and Chief Warren.

"Well?" I urged. "I've got the Commissioner breathing down my neck about us finally having the chance to knock an entire section of organized crime out of the ball park and make Cascade safe for the next Millennium, and you think you can do it for us in an hour. What's the downside to this?"

Ellison looked away, and back again.

"There's a problem," he admitted. "We can find out who it is; that's really not difficult once we start looking. But we won't have anything admissible as evidence to link the killer with the body as a result of what we'll do, unless it shows up in the process." His eyes flicked away and back again, and I saw him make the effort to continue to be honest. "And if someone interrupts us while we're at work on this, we might lose the chance to find the killer -- and the backlash," he ran a hand through his short hair, "could be difficult for the department to cope with."

I leaned back against my desk and tried to filter what he said through the different levels of understanding that I've gained of the Sentinel thing. After a moment, I said, "Let me get this straight, and you tell me if I'm understanding this correctly. You and your partner may have a way to solve this case -- or to find who we're looking for so we can put together the data and get the evidence on him -- but what you'll come up with is the identity and not any other evidence."

"There's a small possibility of corroborating evidence," he said calmly, "but I can't guarantee it. And whatever I find, I can't guarantee it would be useful in court. Let's say the D.A. probably would jump through fire to keep me from testifying on it."

"Gotcha." I held up my hand, and he waited for me to continue. "This is one of those Sentinel things, you and Sandburg would have to do it privately somehow and not be interrupted, or it wouldn't work. If it were interrupted, and publicized, the department would have a lot of questions to answer."

Jim's face set like stone, but his eyes blazed. "That's it."

This wasn't the first time Sandburg had gotten involved in some kind of ritual to solve a case. He'd acted the part of a Vodoun priest, if there was such a thing, to solve one case; he'd worked with tribal healers and Native American medicine men and pretty much every other ethnic or religious group around at one time or another. If he and Jim thought they could wave their hands and pull the answers to this one out of the air, I'd find some way to justify it with the Powers That Be.

"Sounds like a normal Major Crime day to me. What do you need?"

He'd been half-sitting on the conference table. Now he drew a deep breath, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. He walked over and looked out the window at the valley filled with buildings and the mountains beyond. "Some piece of evidence from where we found the body that can be connected to the killer. I'm thinking that a piece of the baling wire we found would work; Forensics had to cut it, but it's untouched otherwise."

"Is this like one of those psychic things where you hold it and trace the history of where it's been?" I asked, starting to feel that itch again.

"Something like that," he said without elaborating.

I waited as he looked out the window and back at me again. If I didn't know better, I'd have sworn he was pleading for me to understand something, though I wasn't certain what. His voice was quiet when he spoke again.

"We've done this before, but not for anything this important. It's been, well, one of those things that Blair uses to test my senses. Then it turned out that under certain circumstances he shares my senses, in a way. He may not know what I'm finding, but he'll know the exact geographic location, and the best way to get there, and he'll pick up little details around the edges of the psychic scene, almost the way I do at a regular crime scene."

This sounded weirder and weirder. "I've got to ask you, Jim. You're not on some kind of illegal substance when this happens, are you?"

"No." Truth, but still hiding something.

I shook my head. "Still sounds like some kind of divination to me. Spooky stuff. I'm not sure I want to be around when you're doing it."

"To be quite honest, sir, the ritual probably wouldn't work if you were around. It takes a fair amount of concentration." Jim looked back at me from the window, a trace of humor in the curl of his lips, though I couldn't see what was so amusing about it.

"Do I want to know exactly what you're going to be doing to get this information?" I asked him.

His voice came back softer than I expected, but no less certain. "Probably not, sir. But I believe it will work."

"Then do it. Retrieve your partner, get whatever supplies you need, do what you have to do, and keep me informed. You've got the rest of the afternoon, detective."

Jim Ellison's eyes flashed at me, and that half-smile returned to his lips briefly. "Yes, sir." As he started to open the door, I called his name and he turned back with his hand on the knob, one eyebrow raised.

"I don't expect the Sentinel thing to work all the time; nothing does. If this falls through, I won't think any less of you as a detective."

"I know that, Simon," he said. "We'll do our best."

Within two minutes he'd called Sandburg out of the conference room, and the two of them had grabbed their coats and headed out.

"They're running down a lead from an informant," I told Connor when she asked, a few minutes later. "It might not pan out, but it's worth a try."

"Frankly, Captain, anything's worth a try right now," she said, rubbing her eyes. "Unless Sandy can pull a rabbit out of a hat, this is going nowhere."

"Don't tell me that," I growled. "I can't go to the Commissioner with 'nowhere' as our destination on this case. Have you rechecked the foreign connections to Ashford? You're the one who speaks more languages than the rest of us."

"Not more, sir, just different, and I don't think speaking Aborigine is going to help us here. Sandy and Jim already covered the Spanish-speaking ones. I can go over the Japanese connection again, but I doubt it will gain us anything. As far as anyone knew, he was supposed to be returning from a trip to Toronto."

"Do what you can," I said.

"Which informant was it?" Brown asked suddenly.

"One of Ellison's. It came in on his cell phone while he was with me. Back to work, all of you, while I try to find something to say to the higher-ups." They scattered and I closed the door behind them, and made a fresh pot of coffee to go with the fresh bottle of aspirin I would probably need if we didn't get a new lead.

***

An hour passed. I finished the coffee, felt the aspirin I'd taken start to work, and stared out the window at the mountains beyond the high-rises. What was that old thing I'd learned in Sunday school as a child? Something about lifting my eyes to the mountains, from whence comes my help? I'd never understood if that was supposed to be a question or a statement when I was a child. Right now, if the mountains had offered to help, I'd have agreed without a qualm.

I was still thinking about mountains and help when the phone rang. Sgt. Feldstein, down near the docks, had run across a missing vehicle description that had been cancelled a day later by the owner; it was a box truck that had been found too close to the pier where the body was located for Feldstein's comfort. I told him to contact the owner and see what else he could find out, and I checked my watch.

Nearly two hours. That ritual had to be over by now. I picked up the phone again and dialed the loft. "Jim?"

The voice that answered sounded so dreamy it was hard to believe it belonged to Jim Ellison. "Simon?"

That must have been some ritual, to make him sound that relaxed. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything. We got a lead on a van that may have been used to transport the body."

"Captain?" It was Sandburg. "You're alone?"

"Yes, I'm alone." I glanced back toward the rest of Major Crime and saw Brown, at his desk on the far side of the room, Rhonda at her desk, two uniforms on their way through the hall, and nobody else. Good enough. I'd told Rhonda I had a headache and was not to be disturbed for anyone, not even the mayor, and she'd agreed to hold the fort. I closed the blinds to a point where I could see out if I needed to but others wouldn't be able to see in.

Did I hear a chuckle on the other end of the line?

"We're figured out a few things, sir." It was Jim's voice this time, all the deep tones audible instead of his usual lighter baritone. "We know where he was killed." His voice drifted off, over a kind of complicated rustle of different kinds of cloth rubbing on one another. "We're still in the ritual, so I'm putting the phone down now, where it will pick up whatever we say."

"I'm sorry. I thought you'd be done by now."

"There's no way to tell how long it will take when we start," Blair said. He continued, with an undertone of authority that I hadn't heard before, "We should be done soon. I know I can trust you to forget some of what you hear, Simon." It was almost as if he were giving me an order; I could feel this peculiar inner urge to agree with whatever he said.

I felt my forehead wrinkling a little. "Yes, Blair."

I couldn't help wondering just what kind of a ritual would take that long, and would provide the information we wanted, but in such a way that the method would be inadmissible in court.

I'd called on the cell phone; they could have been anywhere in the city, in a park, or Sandburg's academic office at Rainier, or a quiet room in any building. I was a detective for a decade before I was put in charge of Major Crime. Many's the time I listened to a phone call to identify the background noises, not as well as Jim does routinely but with as much accuracy as anyone else in the department, and more than some. As curiosity grew, I closed my eyes and set myself to building a picture of the place where they were creating this ritual, whatever it was.

A clock ticking in the background, faintly, then chiming the hour; and the odd rumbling sound of an old refrigerator, mumbling to itself as it stopped and restarted -- they were in the loft, probably in the living room. If they'd been upstairs the clock would probably have been louder; in the kitchen, the fridge would've been noisier.

Rustling of cloth, soft, nearby -- could be anything, but it didn't sound like smooth or silky material. It sounded a little scratchy. Strange. Sandburg wouldn't let anything scratchy be in the loft; he'd gone nuts a year back when a partly mohair sweater had given Jim hives. Now a softer rustle, like the sound of cloth moving over skin, clothes coming off.

Maybe someone had moved the old Mexican blanket that Jim kept on the back of the white couch? That made sense. But why --

No.

They couldn't be.

Soft sounds, not far from the phone, breathing, the whisper of touches, of skin on skin.

Damn it. I felt hot blood come to my face in a blush, not an easy proposition at any time and especially difficult to deal with in my office, on the job.

How did I get myself into these situations?

I never would have been sitting there in a dark room listening to what could easily be termed an obscene phone call for anyone else. I would have laughed it off as a joke -- but this wasn't a joke. Jim Ellison had been as deadly serious when he'd made the offer this morning as he'd been throughout the investigation. I had to take him seriously, no matter where it led me, if I wanted this case to be closed.

But -- damn.

My detectives were having ritual sex, to give us a break in this case.

God help us if the Commissioner ever heard about it.

I knew it hadn't been a casual offer. Jim had been thinking about it for a while before he'd spoken. He'd made it sound as if they'd done it before and that it had give them some kind of knowledge. They'd eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and as a result Ellison's senses had grown and Sandburg's ability to guide him in controlling them had flowered.

There had to be a snake in all of this, though. There always was, somewhere.

I couldn't deny the changes I'd witnessed in their lives, or that I'd benefitted by them as much as I had by Ellison's surly anger when he'd seduced suspects into confessions.

But this made me feel like someone in a little booth on Fourteenth Street, in that row of sleazy sex shops that Vice used to hit almost weekly on busts. Ellison had been there on some of those; he'd worked undercover ...

Better not think about that right now. It might hurt the vibes that Sandburg needed to have working right for the ritual to go on.

Whatever.

Sounded like I'd have to wait a few more minutes for anything to happen.

No. I wasn't going there. Some things are just private.

Let's see. The point spread for Orvelle in the next Jags game was supposed to be --

A creak of springs -- someone sat down on that white couch, probably Jim because of the steadyness of the sound -- and another -- this had to be Blair, not as loud a sound, but more distinct.

I came back to feeling like a voyeur. Audieur? Did it count when you couldn't see? Damned if I know. My experiences with phone sex lines were limited, to say the least, and this wasn't that kind of situation. I wasn't expected to be getting anything out of it except information.

Blair started chanting something in a low throaty voice, in some language I didn't recognize. It wasn't Spanish or Chopec; I'd have understood the Spanish, and I'd heard enough Chopec in Peru to identify it even if I didn't know the words. This was something different. It almost reminded me of the times my Aunt Martha took me to her Pentecostal Church when I was a child, when I heard people praying and singing in tongues, in languages they hadn't grown up with or learned in school. Some of them spoke languages I could identify, like Latin or French or German, even though I couldn't translate all the words, and some spoke or sang sweetly in beautiful voices in languages I had no idea about whatsoever but all the words were good words, words of thanksgiving and love.

If love had its own language, that's what I'd heard then. It was what I was hearing now.

(When I'd stayed with Aunt Martha and Uncle Joe, I heard sounds like that coming from their bedroom upstairs, along with the creaking of the springs. Happy sounds, love talk. Uncle Joe had told me once that Martha sometimes felt herself so far into the Spirit that she had to give thanks for everything, but he didn't sound annoyed, maybe a little amused. And she'd already told me that since speaking in tongues could be done anytime she felt the urge to pray or thank God. I'd already figured out, at nine or so, that having someone to love was something really good to be thankful for.)

Without wishing it, I could feel my body start to respond, the blood flowing to my groin and my cock. I felt so glad that the blinds were pulled, and that I was sitting behind my desk where nobody could see me. It was the same reaction I'd had to Aunt Martha and Uncle Joe, when I was old enough to know what was happening and be aroused by it.

Now Jim's voice came in, indistinctly, and there was another creak from the springs on that white couch, and a long indrawn breath from each of them. Slow, slow movement, slow sounds.

Love sounds.

Long sighs, one soft tenor and one baritone, and silence for a moment. Careful, deep breathing, and the quiet sweep of fingers over skin, and a low moan. Another rustle of heavy cloth, as if it were being wrapped around someone or something.

Quiet whispers.

I rubbed my eyes, and thought of Aunt Martha. I'm not a praying man, but I'd have asked for her help in an instant if she were here, and she'd have been pestering every saint she'd ever heard of to make things right. What she'd have thought of all of this, I didn't want to know, but she'd have prayed for a solution to the case. In the meantime, I told my cock to go back to sleep; it didn't have to react to everything, did it?

God, how did Jim ever manage with those enhanced senses?

No. I didn't want to know how Blair helped him manage. Not at all.

I didn't need to know.

Oh, hell. The evidence was in my hand, murmuring sweet talk into my ear, gentle sighs and moans and deeper groans, and it was pretty clear what was going on.

It took a moment to realize that Jim was speaking, his voice was so soft. "...down Carson Street to the end, then over three blocks to ... Baker's Alley, and left at the overpass." Jim's voice trailed off between words. Was Blair trying to turn him into a psychic or was this part of the Sentinel package that we just hadn't known about before? "Simon, a quarter mile past the overpass there's a blue van with something white painted on it. The body was in that van before it hit the water."

"That might even be the same van I'm phoning about," I said, writing as fast as I could. "A van like that was stolen the day that Ashford died, and found a block from the dock a day later."

"Yes. That's it," Blair said, but without emphasis, as if he were reading from a script. "There are six men right now in the first room on the right in the building next to the van, and more in the rest of the building. A couple hanging out by the back of the van."

I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Sandburg, who couldn't find North with a compass and a guide dog, knew with certainty how many men sat in a room on the other side of town. The cold chills I felt pulled the blood back from my groin, and my stomach roiled.

Jim's voice came in almost immediately. "It's a meeting of the mid-level crime bosses. Harvey, Tolliver, Ling, Falconio, Sierra, Inakawa and two guards by the door. More by the -- no, wait. There's an old bathtub with the enamel rubbed off, on the left, in the next room down the hall from the meeting. That's where Ashford was drowned. That's why the few bruises on the head and shoulders that the medical examiner found didn't look like they came from the dock. They put river water into the tub, drowned him there, and then got rid of the body. It hasn't been cleaned yet, Simon. There should be enough of a residue for Forensics to find something."

"Gotcha. Hold on, I'll call for backup." I put the cell phone aside and called Sgt. Ferris in the squad room, and he sent most of the new shift out on the call.

When I got back to the cell phone, I heard nothing. Dead silence. "Jim? Blair? You there?"

No reply for a moment, then Blair's voice came over the air in deep languorous tones. "We're fine."

"We're going to hang up now, Simon." Jim's voice sounded as rich and warm as I've ever heard, and I knew without asking that that timbre wasn't meant for my ears.

"Good job, detectives." I hung up, and sat there wondering whether I'd just put my foot in my mouth for good or not. As I put the phone down I thought I heard just the faintest moan of pleasure.

***

They showed up at the station an hour later, just as detectives were supposed to do when suspects were apprehended in their cases. If I hadn't been watching so closely, I wouldn't have seen the almost invisible current that seemed to flow between them. When Blair put a hand on Jim's back, it was as if Jim felt it an inch before it landed; I'd see the smile start then, before the touch should have registered at all. Not that they were slacking off; they were working at top speed as usual, going over the booking reports and discussing with Brown and Megan how the suspects should be questioned. When the exchange started to heat up too much, I called them all into my office.

"We are going by the book on this one, everyone. I don't want any little procedural problems to let these guys get away."

"Of course," Connor said. "Captain, --"

"Captain --" Sandburg tried to cut in.

As Brown opened his mouth I put up a hand to stop them all. "This is how it's going to go down, people. Rafe and Sandburg, you question Harvey, Tolliver and Sierra and their people, separately, in room A. I assume your Spanish is up to the job, both of you?" They nodded. "Connor and Brown, you question Ling, Falconio and Inakawa and their people, in room B. Call in an interpreter if you need one; I'll authorize the overtime for it. Ellison, you and I will be observing both of these."

They nodded. Sandburg asked what they all were thinking. "Are you planning any changes in partners that we don't know about?"

I shook my head. "No. I want a team effort on this case, and I think we'll get better results this way. Now, get to work."

Jim hung back a second. "You keeping me to bat cleanup?"

"You might say that. Use those senses of yours to see who's going to get a lump of coal from Santa next year."

"There's not enough coal in Pennsylvania for them." He gave me one of his looks, the one that says he knows what I'm thinking before I open my mouth. I hate that one. "You're thinking of the future, aren't you?"

"Yes, and all the undercover jobs you've done in the past. If I don't want you to go in this time, don't think I'm underestimating you."

"Why would I think that?" That knowing face melted into a grin.

***

Three hours later, after six interrogations, we had a stack of tapes to be transcribed, a holding cell of disgruntled mobsters, and a complaint of lawyers four deep in the hall outside the courtroom demanding that their clients be charged or set free.

"We have means," Brown said.

"And opportunity," Connor chimed in.

"And motive." Rafe nodded emphatically.

"I'm not sure about that," Sandburg said. He raised his hands as if to fend them off as they all turned toward him. "Hear me out. I don't think any of them know what happened. If they'd known Ashford was killed there, would they have used that warehouse for a meeting place? These people are top drawer; they should have been meeting over at the Crescent Inn, in the President's Room, not down by the waterfront."

"So?"

"We've got attorneys up the wazoo out there. If we go to the D.A. with what we have, it won't be enough for a murder charge."

"You think we could charge them with accessory?" Rafe asked. "They'd see it as an insult; they might be more willing to cooperate."

"It would never stick." I turned to Rafe. "What's the status on the other guys we picked up? Have they been questioned?"

He ran his eyes down a list. "Not all of them. Most are just sitting in holding, downstairs."

"All right. I'll fend off the attorneys." I saw Ellison smile, just a little. He knew what was coming. " I want the group of you to split up and interrogate the rest of that crew. Find someone who's willing to roll over on what happened, and we're in. If you can't find that, just find me one person who's lying about something, and we'll have a good place to start. Now, get to it."

I watched them work with the rest of the detectives to check the alibis of the dozen men who'd been arrested along with their bosses. The muscle men, as expected, weren't impressed with anything, didn't know anything, and, for once, weren't lying. The chauffeurs were just as bad, as much made men as the bodyguards. I hadn't expected anything different.

Then Connor called me over as she talked with a little, round-headed man who'd walked into Major Crime because Sgt. Feldstein had noticed his name on a missing-vehicle complaint and asked him to stop by. Ernest Thompson turned out to be free-lance, a trucker by hire -- and annoyed as hell that someone had borrowed his rig without his permission.

"Now, who might have had the opportunity to take your truck, Mr. Thompson?" Connor asked, her eyes sparking with interest. "You normally parked it where?"

"Over by Crosby's Deli," he said. "I never had no trouble there before. It's in a locked yard."

"Do you have any idea who might have taken your truck?"

He shook his head. "Probably just kids. There's a tradeschool a block away. At least I got the truck back. I just had to clean it up."

I noticed Jim listening in from the doorway, and walked over to him. "Did Forensics go over his truck?"

Jim nodded. "Same fibers and skin flakes as in the tub. If he cleaned it, he did a piss-poor job of it."

"Not everyone was in the Rangers, you know." I looked over my glasses at him. "Have I said lately how much I appreciate your, um, special talents?"

"You've no idea how much I appreciate that, Captain" he said blandly, only the tips of his ears going slightly pink.

At Connor's desk, Thompson gave Connor the names of his last three clients before his truck was stolen. Two were unfamiliar names; the third was S. Piaso, with an address up on the hill in Little Italy.

***

"This is what we were missing," Jim said. He had that intent look on his face that boded no good for anyone who got in his way.

Sandburg nodded in agreement. "I had a feeling that the reason those guys were still there when the uniforms arrived was that they were waiting for someone."

"They've been accusing each other of the hit, and all denying it, and they're not lying about it." Jim shook his head and reached for his coffee cup. "None of these people killed Ashford."

I snorted. "S. Piaso could be the guy who delivers pizza for Li'l Antonio, across from Rainier. And we know Ashford liked his pizza. We even know what he liked on it, double anchovies and garlic. That doesn't buy us much."

"We don't know enough that I can wrap my senses around, Captain, and that's the problem." Jim tapped a finger on his thigh reflectively. "The Sentinel thing only goes so far. I can find more of what's there, if something is there, but I can't find it if it's not there. I think whoever killed Ashford is delighted that we've got all these guys in the lockup, because it takes attention away from him, whoever he is."

I turned the puzzle over in my mind, looking for a sliding piece. "Ashford wasn't an idiot. He never would have gone to that warehouse on his own without a reason, not even with his whole operation accompanying him. And if his muscle men had been there, he'd be alive. Forensics found the prints on the tub, and enough flakes of skin to tie the tub to Ashford. But why did he go there?"

"He didn't need money." Sandburg started counting out reasons on his fingers. "He had as much power as he was going to get, and rumor was that he was satisfied with his piece of the pie. He didn't have any reason to rock the boat."

"Right. There's just one other reason for him to go there, and I don't think it involved any of the people we busted yesterday." Blair shot Jim a look, and Jim nodded. "Who are we leaving out of the situation?"

I thought through the structure of the local crime families. The one that Jim had infiltrated several years earlier had disintegrated, between prison and internecine wars. That one had fallen apart when the don's daughter had tried to take it over from her brother. Was there anything similar in any of the other families?

"The Di Pietro family wasn't represented in that meeting, were they?" I said slowly. "They should have been. Someone from Di Pietro should have been at the table."

"Who's running that family now?" Sandburg asked.

Jim went to his desk and brought back a thick manila folder. "Private notes, not case notes, Captain," he said, in answer to my raised eyebrows at a case file not being downstairs where it belonged. "Family structures, relationships, who owes who what. I started it when I was in Vice, and I've tried to keep it up to date." He shuffled through the pages and handed me what looked like a cross between a genealogy and a flow chart. "Here we are."

"Hmm. Very efficient, Ellison. You sure you're not working on some kind of dissertation on family dynamics?"

"Very funny, sir. Check the last column on the page, half way down."

I scanned the page. Giorgio Di Pietro, 55-year-old head of the clan, had died of viral pneumonia a year ago. His brother, Louis, was supposed to have succeeded him, but if so he'd been extremely quiet about it. The remaining members of Giorgio's family included his son, Raphael, who had moved to Las Vegas, his elderly mother, Lydia, and his daughter.

Silvana Piaso.

The daughter of Giorgio Di Pietro, she was married at eighteen to Charles Piaso of Los Angeles, who had died in a car accident two years ago. I handed her photo to Sandburg without a word.

"She's very pretty," Blair said. "And single, at the moment."

"And powerful," Jim pointed out. "When she broke her engagement to Franco Falconio last year, he lost so much status that his brother kicked him out of the organization."

Jim flipped through his notes. "Charlie Piaso ran a trucking company, or rather he owned it and she ran it. She's personally licensed to drive the big rigs."

"I think we've got enough to start turning over more rocks."

"One geological expedition coming up, sir," Sandburg said, with a grin.

"Just one thing, gentlemen." I said, raising a hand. They turned back to me from the door, expectantly. ""Don't ever ask me into one of your rituals; hearing it was enough of a thrill."

Sandburg started to say something but bit his lip and smirked instead. Ellison just nodded, as if acknowledging a point.

"Glad you enjoyed it, sir."

"Oh, get out of here!" I growled, and they left.

***

But after another day of watching detectives turn over rocks and watch what crawls out, so to speak, we were still up shit creek, as far as what we'd found. A little digging had turned up the fact that Silvana Piaso was engaged to Enrique Corazon of Boston, MA, wedding date set, and apparently delighted with the match. Everyone from Sneaks on down, and up, confirmed it; Sneaks' message cost Sandburg another pair of Nikes, which he wasn't pleased about though I did sign the department reimbursement slip.

Ms. Piaso came in to the department to assist with the investigation, at our request, accompanied by her attorney. I sent Sandburg and Ellison in to talk with her, and between them they managed to learn that she felt both annoyed and offended that someone would have associated her in any way with Ashford's death.

"He was supposed to be the best man at my wedding," she said, between anger and tears. "He's been my friend all my life, and he's a lifelong friend of my fiance. Believe me, I wanted him at my wedding, not in his family mausoleum at Riverside Cemetery."

Her alibi for the time of the murder was ironclad -- guest of honor at a bridal shower in Boston. She'd been there for two weeks, and had never hired a truck from anyone named Thompson.

"Find whoever killed my friend, please." Silvana's eyes shone with tears. "I will be very grateful."

Sandburg handed her a tissue. "We're doing our best, ma'am. And you've been very helpful."

***

"I don't suppose you two can just go into a trance and come up with someone else now, can you?" I said, late that afternoon. The three of us were in my office, going over what we had for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"It's not quite that simple, Simon." Sandburg said. His ears went red. "Sorry, Captain."

I waved it off. "Just a thought. I don't want to know."

"Good."

"What about the grieving widow?" Ellison asked. "Who talked with her about her husband's death?"

"Brown," I said. "He and Megan went to see her officially, and Rafe checked out her background as well. There wasn't much."

Sandburg frowned. "Eleanor Ashford. What's her maiden name?"

I flipped through the file on my desk. "Benoites. Why?"

My newest detective leaned forward, his face intent. "She's about my height, a little shorter, mid-thirties, with sandy blond hair, kind of plain looking. Right?"

Ellison picked up a photo and looked it over, nodding. "Yeah. What's up, Boy Wonder?"

Sandburg flipped him the bird, as discreetly as possible considering he was doing it in front of me. "I know her. She audited a couple of my classes, left Rainier to get married about five years ago when I started working with Jim. Let me make a few calls. I might be able to get the straight dope on her."

"Straight dope?" I nodded judiciously. "Right now, I'll take any dope you can scrape up, Sandburg. Go for it."

He flashed me a smile, which mutated to a wicked grin for Ellison, and headed out to his desk with a bit more of a swagger in his step than I'd seen in a while. Ellison watched this with his eyebrows rising toward his receding hairline.

"Problems, detective?"

"No, sir." His smile looked reluctant. "But I'm beginning to think detective work should begin at home."

"Aha, Jimbo. You going to burn Sandburg's little black book?"

"Are you kidding? I'm taking it to the copy shop. He's got as many contacts among his ex-girlfriends as I have in the whole city. I'm thinking of making it a standard reference document for Major Crime."

"Make sure I get the first copy," I growled.

***

It wasn't as easy to persuade Eleanor Benoites Ashford to come in for questioning as it had been for Silvana Piaso. Eleanor Ashford arrived under protest, accompanied by two attorneys and an air of inflamed dignity that I couldn't quite buy.

When she saw Sandburg, detective's badge in its holder on its chain around his neck, she froze for an instant. Sandburg assured her that yes, he did remember her and thought she'd made a significant contribution to his classes. She thawed then, and spent ten minutes assuring him that she'd never believed any of the fuss about his dissertation, deplored the ethics of the publisher who'd caused him trouble, and congratulated him on his new position. He took all this with a becoming grace, sent a uniform out to get her some of my good coffee, and sat down across from her.

"I thought you might like to know what progress has been made in solving your husband's murder," Sandburg said.

Even from behind the glass I could see the earnest expression on his face work its charm upon her. "He's been picking up notes from you, Jim?" I murmured.

"Could be." Jim watched the room intently. "Then again, he's the one who dated every unmarried woman in the Department except for Rhonda and Megan."

"And Carolyn."

"She said no."

"Oh?" I shot him a sideward glance.

"That's what she told me." He shrugged. When I opened my mouth to make another wisecrack, he shushed me, his gaze focused on his partner.

"...We've learned that your husband went to see his physician the day he died. Did he tell you he was going?" Sandburg asked.

"No, he didn't." Eleanor Ashford frowned. "He went to Doctor Simmons?"

"That's our information, ma'am. Apparently, on his way back home he had car trouble, and called for a taxi. When the taxi arrived at the location your husband had given, he was gone."

"That's very strange." She shook her head. "I'll have to ask Dr. Simmons why Ignatius went to see him."

Sandburg turned over a page in the folder he held, which he kept tipped up so neither she nor her attorneys could see what was written there. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but apparently it wasn't your husband's first visit to Dr. Simmons." His voice sounded deeper, more earnest, as if he were just commiserating with her on her husband's demise.

Jim leaned closer to the window and his eyes narrowed. I saw him take a deep breath, let it out, and take another one. "What is it?" I asked quietly, but he ignored me.

"Oh?" Eleanor's face showed genuine confusion, mixed with wariness.

"Apparently your husband was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer, Mrs. Ashford. I'm so sorry to have to tell you like this."

Her shock looked genuine. Her hand went up to a place on her cheek that looked slightly darker, yellowish, like an almost-healed bruise under a very good makeup job.

"That no-good son of a bitch," she murmured.

"Excuse me?" There was that odd note in Sandburg's voice again.

Jim had gotten control over his breathing, but something in that room had shaken him, and from what I knew of him it wasn't the woman. I was starting to feel concerned. He glanced aside, saw my face and shook me off, as if whatever was happening didn't matter.

Attorney A touched his client's arm. She ignored him.

"He should have told me. He never told me anything."

I went to the door and told Brown, "Take him in now."

In a moment, while Eleanor was still telling Sandburg that her husband never confided in her about his health, the door to the interrogation room opened to admit a certain free-lance trucker named Thompson and Detective Henri Brown.

"-- and he was very reticent about -- " Her voice stopped in mid-sentence.

"That's the woman." Thompson said. "That's the one that hired my truck."

"Are you certain?" Brown asked him.

Eleanor Ashford blew out air in an angry burst. "What are you talking about?"

"Silvana Piaso. She wanted some rugs moved. Left my truck a mess."

"I'm not that tramp Piaso," Eleanor spat.

"Thank you, sir." Brown escorted the man out of the room.

"As I was saying," Sandburg continued, as if nothing had happened, "when the cab arrived, your husband wasn't at the location from which he'd phoned. That's because he'd flagged down a cab from another company and gone to the Triangle Laundry Service warehouse, in Baker's Alley, to meet someone who said she was Silvana Piaso."

I hadn't been hearing things. Sandburg's voice had mutated, changed into something new since the last time I'd heard him in an interrogation. Or was it new? It reminded me of Jim's voice, years ago, but its force went beyond the seduction he'd used. This was the voice of someone who was absolutely certain of his ground, someone who could and would compel an answer simply by asking the question because he could not be refused.

I glanced at Jim. He was starting to go marble white under his tan, and his knuckles gripped the back of a nearby chair. "Oh, no." he whispered. "Don't do this, Chief."

"What?" I asked.

"Watch."

Sandburg looked up from the folder. "Ignatius went to meet you, apparently. Why, Eleanor?"

Both attorneys opened their mouths. She moved a hand and both mouths closed with a snap. "He shuts me out. He never tells me anything."

As I listened to my newest detective unravel Eleanor Ashford's story, I watched Jim in the faint reflection on the observation-room glass. He swallowed hard and consciously loosened his fingers from their grip on the chair as he watched Blair take the strands of her tale and tie them into a snare she couldn't escape.

"Shuts you out -- " Sandburg probed gently, surely.

"I'm the one with the MBA. I'm the one who turned his business around and got it on its feet again. What's my reward? A pat on the head and a condescending, 'Now, dear, don't worry your head about that, my business manager will take care of it.'" Her tone sounded venomous. "His previous business manager was skimming off twenty percent and he never even noticed until I went over the books. Twenty percent!"

The attorneys sighed. One said, "Mrs. Ashford, I'd advise you not to say anything more."

She ignored him. "I just wanted to make things more efficient. It's not like I could get him to take a vacation. He was losing money left and right."

"So you thought if you got him out of the way for a while you could put the business back in order?" Sandburg toyed with the pen in his left hand, flipping it in and out of his fingers, staring at her over the top of the folder with his head tilted to one side as if she were the most fascinating creature on the planet.

I could have sworn that Jim had stopped breathing.

"Yes." Her head came up. "But I knew he'd never listen to it from me. He's been avoiding me for months. If he thought it was coming from her, he'd listen. So I got him over there, and I tried to reason with him. I really tried. And he hit me, and started to walk out. He'd never hit me before." Her hand went to her cheek. "And when he did that, I pushed him back, and he tripped and fell into the tub."

"The tub." The pen stopped moving.

She looked away. "You're going to think this is crazy."

I felt my back muscles relax. Whenever a suspect starts with 'you'll think this is crazy,' it's never crazy. It's truth. "He's got her."

Jim's reflected face showed blazing eyes against marble.

"Almost," he said quietly, not that Sandburg or Mrs. Ashford could hear us. "Wait for it."

"What's with you?" I asked him. "Your partner's doing a hell of a job in there and you're sweating bricks?"

"You don't understand, Simon," he whispered.

Sandburg wore his most earnest expression. "No, really. Please."

Then I got it. I listened to Sandburg's voice, its darker tones so evident, and knew.

The undertone in his voice came through so clearly that it scared me even as it told me what I heard. Sandburg was putting command tones into his voice in a way the Academy commandant would have dearly loved to be able to teach. He was using the sound of his voice to manipulate her, so she would have no choice but to answer any question he asked, fully and completely.

And the knowledge that his partner had this kind of control was scaring the shit out of Jim Ellison.

"I knew Ignatius liked steamed crabs, so I'd had some flown in and kept in the tub, so we could have dinner afterward. There's an excellent kitchen attached to the warehouse, and a private dining room. Very nice." She smiled faintly. "The crabs were in a loose crate under the water, so they couldn't climb out. I thought, if I gave him a good dinner, maybe he'd be more willing to listen ..." Her voice trailed off.

"And?" he prompted gently.

"Ignatius fell, and his face went under water. We couldn't get him to come to." She sighed. "It was my chance, so I took it. I've done more to put the business back in order in the last three weeks than he's done in six months. And now I find out the bastard was dying anyway."

Sandburg tipped the folder up higher, and I saw the blank paper he had been 'reading' from.

"Just one more question, Eleanor." Sandburg's voice sounded deceptively casual.

Jim, who had let go of the window and started to turn away, swerved back, his eyes narrowed. He rubbed his face with the palm of one hand. "Can we get some time off after this, Captain? He's going to need it."

"You look like you need it more. He's doing all right," I said.

"You don't know, Simon. You don't know."

In the next room, Sandburg put the pen down on the desk. "What did you do with the crabs, Eleanor?"

Eleanor Ashford looked queasy. "I couldn't stand to eat them, so I had the men let them go out in the river."

"Where did they do that?" His voice was so gentle.

"Upstream from the pier ... oh!" Her face crumpled.

"Eleanor Ashford, you're under arrest in connection with the death of your husband, Ignatius Ashford..." Sandburg's voice had an edge on it that hadn't been present before. As he turned away from the desk toward the door, I saw his face fully for the first time. He wore a look of disgust all too much like the one Jim used to wear after he'd seduced a confession from a suspect.

As a detective, Blair Sandburg had gone so far beyond the man we'd known as Jim's observer that I might as well consider the bouncy academic kid to be dead and buried. His successor in the same skin had become as dangerous a man in his own way as Jim Ellison, though few people might guess that until they saw him in action.

Beside me, Jim said quietly, "That's how he got his doctorate."

He'd turned that voice loose on the academics who'd scorned him? They wouldn't have had a chance. "I'd wondered."

His voice sank to a whisper. "He's told me he hates to do that, to use that voice because it's so manipulative. But he's getting used to it. After his defense, he told me to get him drunk, and I did."

"Sandburg doesn't drink that much." Even at the office poker games, he'd stop at two beers. I'd never seen him drink the hard stuff.

"He did straight shots that night." Jim's eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them, he turned away from the window and trained them on me. "I'm not saying this to anyone else, but it scares me when he starts getting used to that kind of power."

"Because you can't resist?"

I know I couldn't resist that voice, if it asked anything of me. The little I'd heard of it aimed in my direction on the phone had been enough.

"Yes." His eyes met mine, and I saw the lines of strain around them. "I have no defenses against that. Against him. I never did."

"I know." A disturbing thought came to mind. "And you think he's starting to like doing it."

As if against his will, Jim nodded slowly. "He won't do it when I'm in the same room; he knows what it does to me. But he's using it more and more when I'm not right there." He shook his head slightly, as if clearing away cobwebs. "I don't like thinking that he'll turn into something like what I used to be."

"I don't think that'll happen, Jim."

"What's to stop it? You know as well as I do, power is addicting."

I put a hand on his shoulder. "You didn't have anyone, except Jack. But Blair has you."

"I hope that's enough."

"It will be." I spoke as cheerfully as I could, considering how deeply this disturbed me.

"If you don't mind, Simon, I need to take a break for a little while, get to some place quiet."

Some place he couldn't hear that voice.

"Do it." I checked my watch. "Go pick up the last of the forensics reports for this case, and if you take a while to get back I won't notice." He could sit in the last booth in the little coffee shop down the street for twenty minutes and still have time to make it back, and I'd keep Sandburg occupied until he arrived.

We left the room and he slipped down the stairs around the corner, out of sight of the interview room door.

***

"There wasn't a doctor, was there?" I said, outside the interview room after she'd been taken away.

Blair gave me a slightly twisted grin. "Jim did it in an interrogation a few years ago, on the Mansard case." He didn't look like someone who needed to drink straight shots.

"I remember." I gave him the over-the-glasses look. "You've learned a lot from your partner, haven't you?"

"You really sure you want to know, Captain?" he returned.

"No, I don't."

How could I say what I was thinking? How could I say that I was seeing the price they'd started to pay for their taste of Eden, and that it was more than I'd ever want to pay myself?

I knew he'd read something in my face, but I wanted him to understand that I approved of how he'd handled the interrogation. "Good job, detective. I suppose that crab dinner we were going to have next weekend is postponed?"

Blair gave me a crooked smile. "I'm not much on cannibalism, even secondhand. But make it king crab legs and you're on."

"That's what I figured."

We'd started down the hall toward Major Crime as we talked. Blair stopped outside the door, with his hand on the knob. "You still want a pair of renegade angels in Major Crime, Captain?"

Serious, and not.

I've heard it said that detectives are the thinking cops, the ones that put it all together. That doesn't mean it's always easy to say what has been deduced, or to hide it from sight.

I ached, seeing the ways that he'd changed from that lighter-hearted perpetual student to a cop as hardened as any in my command. It hadn't been a one-way street; Jim had weathered, gentled, his rough edges smoothed. When I'd come to Major Crime, I'd had to deal with a walking minefield. Now, the mines had been neutralized, by someone who'd become one of the most thoughtful cops I'd ever met.

And one of the most powerful, in his own way. He'd always been persuasive, but now, if he wished, he could be dangerous. And that possibility, that potential, had poisonous teeth.

Jim had been terrified when his senses switched on, and his relief when Blair had started to show him how to manage them had made him a new man. Now I saw fear in his eyes again, for both of them, and the painful knowledge in Blair's eyes of how far he'd gone beyond anything that could have been considered an ordinary life. Yet they'd both accepted the snakebite along with the apple, in order to protect the people of Cascade.

Renegade angels?

"Already have 'em," I told him, and smiled as well as I could manage.


End file.
